knock the pistol from her hand? Maybe once, Lieutenant Valcour thought unhappily, out of every twenty times. And she certainly wouldn’t refrain from pulling the trigger while Hansen practised twenty times.
“Tell me,” he said, “how you ever managed to breathe inside of that chest.”
“The back of it is broken.” The casualness of the question had startled her into an answer.
“Your own back must be pretty well broken, too.” Was Hansen, the idiot, going to smash the glass after all with the butt of his gun? Hansen was staring very intently at him, seeking advice. He all but imperceptibly shook his head in negation. “And what did you have in the paper bag you carried when you came here and from which you tore that scrap of paper upon which you wrote the misleading note?”
“This gun.”
“You carried the gun in a paper bag?”
“I was smart, was I not? Who would think that in a cheap paper bag there was a gun?”
“Not even a disciple of the fourth dimension.” Hansen was aiming now at her wrist. It was absurd—he faintly shook his head again. No—no! “How did it happen that Mr. Endicott had his overcoat on but you had his hat?”
“I wear it for a better disguise. I have the dust on my face—there is the hat—it fits well over my cloche. The effect is astonishing.”
“I see, and so when Endicott came back into the room to get it he couldn’t find it and thought he must have left it in the cupboard?”